Influence of Social Media in Retail

PART 3 - Why Social Media is Popular Among Retailers?

SERIES A

One thing that retailers and brand today must know is how to operate in the social media environment. Why is that important? You will understand this once you know the impact of social media on retail.

Even though research shows that consumers still prefer to shop in physical stores, foot traffic to brick and mortar stores across the globe continue to drop each day and the COVID19 pandemic has only aggravated it. As the store footfall decreases, more and more retailers have started focusing their efforts towards social media engagements and mobile experiences.

Marketers once believed the customer journey resembled a simple and straight path-to-purchase. They focused their attention on four key stages of the journey:

·???????Awareness

·???????Evaluation

·???????Purchase

·???????Retention (i.e. CRM programs)?

While these old methods continue to play an important role today, social media has strengthened two important elements for brands: awareness and advocacy.?

Here is how social media is changing retail.

Not too long ago, for most retailers, having a social media presence was more about interacting with customers and prospects.

Social media is home to over 2.5 billion people and that is reason enough for retailers across the globe to have presence and be active on social networking sites. Half of them check their social media account as part of their daily morning routine. An individual puts an incredible amount of time and energy into creating their personas on social media. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok are only some of the platforms on which individuals spend hours creating a digitalized version of their ‘ideal’ self. This tells us of how significant social media is today. Today, the views of consumers matter more than ever, as their ability to share views with others is constantly growing. Individuals through their posts on various social medias, upload their photos, like pages and share their views on multiple topics. Hence, understanding and examining the information shared by your customers on social media is critical. Customers put significant time and effort into their social media presence and pay considerable attention to what is being shared by their friends.

As more and more retailers realise the role that social media is playing in the buying decision of consumers, the resources devoted to formulating social media marketing strategies to garner consumer attraction and facilitate product sales, have started to increase. More and more businesses started to establish presence on the social networking sites, the focus on these platforms shifted from communication with customers to their shared opinions and experiences about brands.

Retailers have started to engage with social media influencers to develop their brand image /identity and hope that the followers would eventually convert into paying customers. With the advent of new social commerce technologies, the biggest change for retailers with a social media presence will be to shift the focus from branding to lead generation and conversion. One in five people check out a brand’s social media before purchasing.

Social media provides people an opportunity to not just interact with other people, but also with businesses that offer what they’re looking for and present small and big businesses with an opportunity to grow. It has helped shrink the gap from capturing the attention of consumers to selling to them goods and services. The shorter the path between consumer and product, the more likely a business is to convert sales. Social media not only helps to boost sales, but you also provide the brands with data about the consumers behavioural and demographics, along with direct feedback and gain a better understanding of the customer base and respond to them.

Knowing who you’re targeting and on which platform is the key to the underpinning of your success on social media. Make good use of customer personas and tailor your content as you see fit.

Some of the questions that the brand / businesses need to consider are:

• What information can you find out about your target audience?
• What inspires the customers and engages them?
• Where do they like to hang out?
• How does your customer like to interact and engage with brands?
• What kind of content do they wish to share?

The 2 areas that I will be covering over the next 2 weeks that are very critical to any brand on Social Media are:

1.?????Social Commerce: Social commerce encourages?people to connect with a business through two-way communication. It is set to touch?$16-20 billion?in gross merchandise value (GMV) over the next five years in India.

2.?????Influencer Marketing: Social media influencers / Celebrity endorsements influence the feelings of the consumers?and can also influence the attitude consumers have towards the advertisement and attitude towards the brands, which can increase the purchase intentions and, consequently lead to increased sales.

As brands/retailers, you need to understand the communities your customers belong to, identify emerging trends and understand the conversations that occur on social media. For these reasons and more, social media has become a driver of demand.